French and Oriental Love in a Harem - Page 58/178

The Turks are calumniated, my friend, there's no doubt about it. It is

not enough for us to say and to believe, with the vulgar herd, that

these turbaned people are wallowing in materialism and are not

civilised; we must do more than this, and convict them of their errors.

We, fortified with a singular infatuation in our ideas, our habits, and

our personal associations, venture to settle by our sovereign decrees

the loftiest questions of sentiment. The rules to be observed by the

perfect lover in the courtship and treatment of his lady-love, have been

settled at tournaments, by the Courts of Love of Isaure, and by the

College of the Gay Science. Our pretensions to troubadourism have never

been abandoned. The affectations of "L'Astrée" have been erected into a

code of Love, and we have succeeded in establishing the French cavalier

as the paragon of excellence in love matters, and the perfect type of

gallantry. The saying "to die for one's lady-love" rises so naturally to

our lips that the most insignificant cornet might warble it to his

Célimène without causing her to smile.

You will nevertheless admit, I hope, that we ought to discard a few of

these absurd expressions. That we know how to make love is not much to

boast about, after all. The only important point for us as philosophers

is to know whether our ideal is really the higher ideal--whether our

treatment of woman is really more worthy both of her and of ourselves

than the pagan treatment which prevails among the Eastern nations? Here

at once crops up the elementary dispute between the votaries of polygamy

and monogamy. Both these institutions are based upon divine and human

laws, both are written down and defined in moral codes, and in sacred

books. One takes its origin in the Bible, and remains faithful to its

traditions; the other has developed at some period, from the simple

conventions of a new social order. We must not conclude that we alone

possess the knowledge of absolute truth, merely because our conceit

postulates for us the superiority of our time-honoured civilisation. All

wisdom proceeds from God alone, and truth is for us only relative to

place, time, and habit. Was not Jacob, when he married at the same time

Leah and Rachel, the daughters of Laban, nearer than we are now to the

primitive sentiment of the laws of nature and of revelation? Do you

presume to blame him, insignificant being that you are, because yielding

to the supplication of his beloved Rachel he espoused--somewhat

superfluously it may be--her handmaid Bala, with the simple object of

having a son by her? In presence of this idyl of the patriarchal age,

what becomes of all our theories, our ideas, and our prejudices, the

fruits after all of a hollow and worthless education?